Notice

If there are features or columns that you'd like to see, but that don't fit the existing format, please let the Editor know what you have in mind.

If you are aware of particular projects that should be covered, or particular people who would write good articles, please let the Editor know. (We just need a name and affiliation/e-mail address or URL).

If you would like to write an article about your own work, please get in touch. If your proposal is accepted, you will be asked to submit according to the deadlines and submissions guidelines below

If you would like to write a book review, or plan to submit a conference report, please get in touch.

Deadlines

The AISBQ is issued in the first week of the quarter (January, April, July, October). Whatever you would like to contribute, the list below explains roughly when we need your input for a particular edition.

Submission Style / LaTeX

If you'd like to submit your work in other formats, please get in touch with the editor.

Submission Length

Announcements: up to 2 pages

Short pieces: up to 4 pages

Longer pieces: up to 10 pages

Please note that limits apply 'normally' and we have the scope to accept longer articles as an exception, for which please contact the editor of the Q.

Suggested Structure

Your article should be aimed at people within Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour but who are not in your particular discipline. Bear in mind that this includes a very disparate collection of people: some will have computer science backgrounds, some electrical and electronic engineering, others cognitive science, psychology or medicine. The article should:

If you plan to write a book review or conference report for us, please first contact the editor to make sure that the subject matter is of sufficient general interest. Before you write, make sure you know about deadlines, read the guidance below for the particular type of report you have in mind, and make sure to look at submissions guidelines so that you send things in the right format.

Writing Conference Reports

You may be asked to write a conference report in order to receive a travel award, or you may simply wish to write one. Either way, it is crucial that you contact the Editor as far in advance of the actual meeting as possible (up to three months before) to aid planning. It is also crucial that you are especially aware of deadlines, and negotiate new ones if necessary. Our goal is to print conference reports (ie. for them to appear in an issue that is actually published) within four months of the meeting, which means that we may have to stretch deadlines at certain times of year.

In addition you should consider the following:

Your report must be 900 words or less.

You should do one of the following with your report:

Describe the three most interesting projects you were introduced to at the meeting (you will have to get copies of the papers for this) and explain why you found them compelling. These projects should not only be interesting from the perspective of your particular sub-discipline, but should be set in a slightly wider context. You may need to fill in this context yourself.

Describe a research trend that became apparent through attending the conference. Explain what it was and describe how various papers (say 6-8) supported this trend.

Describe a new topic that has emerged recently, giving details of three papers in the meeting you attended as examples of this topic.

If you have another idea for the report, feel free to discuss it with the Editor.

Make sure to start the article explaining the content (essentially, this is a newswriting sytle). First lines might include "[This] research trend emerged...", "[Three interesting projects] were presented...", "[This] new area of research is emerging...". The details of the where and when of the conference are less important, and should go towards the end of the first paragraph or later.

Please note that the reader is not generally interested in issues relating to the atmosphere, the hard work of the organizers, the beauty of the location, the way the structure of the meeting worked, and so forth. Unless you feel that your meeting was an exceptional case for some reason (contact he Editor in advance if this applies), you should mention these issues in passing, if at all.

What is most useful is information about the work, research trends and ideas.

Writing Book Reviews

There are several things to keep in mind when writing a book review:

We only plan to run one page of book reviews per issue, so any review should either be no more than 900 words long (full page), or about 400 words long (half page). Let the Editor know in advance before you write anything, both to save space for a particular issue and to allow planning of a second book review where appropriate.

Book reviews should fall into one of two categories:

a) Quite positive reviews of good books published in the last year or two. (The more recent the better). These can be on any topic, including sub-disciplines, but must be at a level that,say, an entry-level postgraduate student could understand. If you're not sure, ask the Editor.

b) Reviews (whether positive or negative) of books recent books that can't be ignored. Such books are likely to be more general in nature. The idea is that it is not productive to run negative reviews of obscure books.

In addition, all reviews must be signed, with a short bio and URL of the author supplied.

The AISB is sent books to review, which we make available first to the Editorial Board, then to the membership. A list is available here.

If you wish to review one of the books below, please contact the Editors by sending an email to aisbqXX at aisb dot org dot uk where XX are the last two digits in the year.

Importantly: Only AISB members will be sent books for review. If you subsequently decided that you cannot review the book, either because of time constraints or because you are otherwise prevented from doing it according to the guidelines, then you must let the Editors know as soon as possible. It will then go back on the list to be reviewed. If someone else wishes to review it, you will be expected to send the book to them directly. In addition to reading the guidelines before starting your review, make sure you know about deadlines, types of reports and formats.

Features/Reviews: An Anarchy of Methods: Current Trends in How Intelligence is Abstracted in AI; Book review: Logic In Games (van Benthem, 2014); Event: Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems; Event: 2nd International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction.

Features/Reviews: Algorithm Selection in Practice; The Seemingly Contradictory Philosophical Legacy of Computability and Information Theory; A system for the discovery of novel, surprising (and valuable?) English language sonnets; Event: Social Media: an informal data source for healthcare intervention; Book review: The Machine Question: Critical perspectives on AI, robots, and ethics.

Features/Reviews: Representations and Architectures to Support Diagrammatic Reasoning; A New COST Action: Autonomic Road Transport Support (ARTS) Systems; Précis of The Organisation of Mind; Book review: Embodiment and the Inner Life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds; Book review: Computer Models of Computer Creativity; Book review: Randomness through Computation: Some Answers, More Questions; Conference report: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; Conference report: 2nd International Computational Creativity Conference; Conference report: 2nd Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory

Society: Details of the AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 in honour of Alan Turing

Features: Justine Cassell, Andrea Tartaro and Miri Arie on With a Little Help from our (Virtual) Friends; Sazalinsyah Razali, Qinggang Meng and Shuang-Hua Yang on Multi-Robot Cooperation Inspired by Immune Systems; Beatriz Mencía, Alvaro Trapote and David Pardo on “What was that you said?”; Maria Dobrska on Learning to Rank Order and its Applications

Society: Details of the AISB Convention

Reviews/Previews: Fourth Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology; European Conference on Computing and Philosophy

Features: Humphries and Prescott search for the neural basis of action-selection; Sunny Bains on why intelligence is more than 1s and 0s; Heiko Hoffman on bio-inspired vision for robotic grasping; Myra Wilson on BIRO-net; Frisch and Miguel on the automated solving of combinatorial problems; Peter Smith on AI and stylometric analysis; Schlessinger and Lotto on Mosaic World; < u>Liz Stillwaggon on a-life and the mind-body problem; and Paul Vogt on emergence of compositionality.

Society: Editorial announcing the appointment of a new editor.

Reviews/Previews: Colin Johnson on ‘Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy’ by Tim Roughgarden.

Features: Maja Pantic on a fully-automated system for facial muscle action. Roman Belakin on a test for irrational thinking; Jose Carmena on brain-machine interfaces; James Marshall on ant decision making; Stafford et. al on an artificial rocky-shore community; Eduardo Miranda on music from artificial life; and Blackwell and Young on live algorithms.

Society: Secratary and Webmaster's report.

Reviews/Previews: Igor Aleksander on the new ‘Sweet Dreams’ book by Dan Dennett.

Features: Stafford and Rind on a crash-prevention system for cars inspired by locust vision; Yorick Wilks on companion agents on the web; Sellers and Paul on tyrannosaur speed; Giorgio Metta on the RobotCub approach to cognition; Aaron Sloman on altricial systems; and James Anderson on Perspex Machine IV.

Features: Paul Newman on robust navigation in unknown environments; David Randall on logic, logicism, and logic-based AI; Morse/Chrisley on the Seer project; Mark Cohen on teaching agent programming; Leslie Smith on auditory what and where tasks; and Lola Cañamero on working towards emotionally-competent systems.

Reviews/previews: Reifers on Tom Sgouros’ play; Johnson on emotion book by Evans and Cruse; and Shanahan on essential books about consciousness.

Features: Paulo Santos on looking for logic in perceptual observations; Susan Blackmore on the rise of the meme machines; Moshe Sipper on building blocks in evolutionary algorithms; Leech and Mareschal on a connectionist model of analogical completion; Tony Veale on analogy and lexical ontologies; Julie McCann on the new Intelligent Media Institute; and Robert Zimmer on Goldsmiths art and AI projects.

Reviews: Roelofsen on ECAI 2004 and Webb on a new book in memory of Herb Simon.

Features: Joanna Bryson on the role of emotions in modular intelligent control; Russell Beale on models for mobile context awareness; Mathieu Capcarrere on cellularity, development and self-repair; Beale and Jones on situated interaction and mobile awareness; and Wolfgang Schoppek on exemplar vs structural knowledge in system control.

Previews: Polani on RoboCup.

Reviews: Gobet on Glimcher’s ‘Neuroeconomics’ book and Johnson on ‘Imitation in Animals and Artifacts’.

Features: Andrew Davison on Real-time camera-based localisation and mapping; Manfred Kerber on living with paradoxes; Kerstin Dautenhahn on robots and autistic children; John Zeleznikow on modelling legal knowledge; Anthony Pipe on the Whiskerbot project; and Hu and Calderon on robot learning through imitation.

Features: Vadera on family resemblance, Bayesian networks and exemplars; Gartland-Jones on the IndagoSonus composer; Jamnik on informal maths reasoning; Diller on evaluating assertions; Koza on using GAs to invent; Nemzow on Robots and chaos; Lane/Gobet on the CHREST perceptual model; Gobet on implicitly learning chess; van Remortel on phenotypes in evolution.

Reviews: Boden on "Cognitive Modeling," Webb on "The Analogical Mind."

Reviews: Roeckel on "Time Warps, String Edits, and Macromolecules: The Theory and Practice of Sequence Comparison," edited by David Sankoff and Joseph Kruskal; Demiris on "Imitation in animals and artifacts," part of AISB '03.